


Paralytic

by lovedsammy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Kinda, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2016-02-23
Packaged: 2018-05-22 19:06:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6091036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovedsammy/pseuds/lovedsammy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam doesn’t mean to. God, he doesn’t. But it’s so hard to look at Castiel now and not see Lucifer behind those sea-colored eyes. The hunter knows it’s unfair to Castiel, who had just been trying to help. They’d gotten through some bad shit before - they could do it again. Sam tells himself this like a mantra, over and over, but there’s something about it this time that just makes it so much harder. Sometimes Cas will reach out to place a hand on his shoulder, an affectionate gesture, something he had so often done in the past just out of habit, and Sam finds himself pulling away instinctively, out of his chair and already halfway across the room with an apology on his lips.<br/>The days after they get Castiel back are the hardest.<br/>Episode coda. Spoilers for 11.14 and beyond.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paralytic

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so I haven't written SPN fanfic in a long, long time. Truth be told, I'm nervous to even post this on here. I don't feel confident enough in writing shippy fics so I usually avoid finishing them or posting them. But this... this I had to do.  
> I ship Sastiel to the fucking moon and stars, so seeing 11.14 nearly ruined me. This fic is meant to be PRE-ESTABLISHED Sastiel, and dealing with the aftermath of Lucifer wearing Cas's face. It also deals with heavy themes of PTSD and rape recovery, just because there has been so many implied references to Lucifer having raped Sam. Also, I apologize if any of my wording is weird or off; I've been writing academically for almost two years and thus may have forgotten how to go about writing creatively. Alas, I hope you enjoy.

The days after they get Castiel back are the hardest.

There’s nowhere else for him to go but to the bunker -- and the brothers are okay with that, are okay with him. They all know that there has been enough blame and judgment between the three of them to last a fucking lifetime. They don’t need it. Not after everything that has happened. So when they head back, it’s with an air of forgiveness and finality, of moving on and letting go. But some selfish, horrible part of Sam can’t bring himself to, and he hates himself for it. He wishes Castiel wasn’t here, in such close proximity to him, even with all of the history between them, all that there still _is,_ because damn it all, he _loves_ him.

Sam doesn’t mean to. God, he _doesn’t_. But it’s so hard to look at Castiel now and not see Lucifer behind those sea-colored eyes. The hunter knows it’s unfair to Castiel, who had just been trying to help. They’d gotten through some bad shit before -- they could do it again. Sam tells himself this like a mantra, over and over, but there’s something about it this time that just makes it so much harder. Sometimes Cas will reach out to place a hand on his shoulder, an affectionate gesture, something he had so often done in the past just out of habit, and Sam finds himself pulling away instinctively, out of his chair and already halfway across the room with an apology on his lips.

_I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Cas._

He can’t bring himself to meet his stare, eyes burning in shame. It’s Dean who comforts him when he gets like this, and he appreciates it, he really does, but it’s not a brotherly comfort that he needs right now. But it’s what he gets, because he can’t - won’t - have anything else. “It’s all right, Sam,” Castiel’s voice is gentle, soothing, reaching Sam from where the angel stands stiff as stone a hundred feet away. “I overstepped my bounds, neglecting to consider how you might feel. I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m sorry.” He smiles gently, apologetically, though sadness flickers in his eyes. And damn it, Sam knows Castiel is hurting, too. But it’s nothing compared to the absolute misery that Sam feels, peeling away at his very innards, disassembling him piece by fractured piece.

Duct tape and safety pins indeed.

But he tells Cas that he wants - needs - to fix this, even if he’s not sure that it’s possible. But it feels right to try.

It takes them a long time.

It’s weeks before Sam can even allow himself to meet Castiel’s eyes, months before he can stand next to him without violently starting. It’s half a year later before they can do even the most innocent of things -- reaching out to stroke the others’ hand, entwine them, lean against each other. A couple months after that and they can nuzzle their noses, brush apprehensive lips together, always recoiling short of actually meeting, leaving them both feeling paralyzed and worse than before.

After a year has passed, Sam wonders if anything will ever go back to the way it was. He and Cas talk about it, late one night in the bunker’s library after a long stretch of research. He wonders if it’s finally all become too much, that he’s too broken now, too damaged to be in a relationship with Cas -- or anyone, really. He decides that maybe Cas should just give up on him, find someone else, be happy, because no matter how much Sam loves him, he can’t move _past_ this.

And he’s sorry, God he’s so fucking sorry, because it kills him and he knows it kills Cas too. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Lucifer wasn’t supposed to _take this_. But he has, just like he takes everything, smears everything that Sam loves with taint as evil as the poison that courses through his veins.

Neither of them are aware of Dean watching them from the hallway, at a loss of what to do.

When Sam wakes from nightmares every night of a deep fist buried in his chest wearing Castiel’s face, the angel just holds him until the collar of his trench coat is damp from Sam’s tears. For the first time in his existence, the celestial being lets himself cry too. They whisper the same thing to each other, as saying it will somehow make them believe it: “it’s not your fault.” But neither of them hears it - not really.

Sam has never called more bullshit now than he has on the expression that time heals all wounds. There were some wounds simply couldn’t be healed. They could scab over, reopen, scar. There was always some measure of reality that proved that the injury had been created in the first place.

For them, this is it.

It’s a constant desire to try and reconnect to the way they were before, breaching the emotional and physical intimacy that they both crave, but continuously unable to make the leap. Almost two years later and Sam keeps telling himself that maybe one day it will become easier, maybe one day he can bring himself to think of Castiel in that way again. Lucifer can’t have this -- he’s taken too much already -- but day after day, he finds himself standing still, unable to move forward.

And then slowly, so slowly that it’s excruciating, things begin to change.

Sam is barely conscious of it when he begins to fall in step with Cas again, brushing shoulders without flinching, sharing an easy smile as they talk over coffee, holding his gaze for longer than thirty seconds at a time. For the first time in almost three years, they kiss. And it’s surprisingly easy, and like they were just picking up from the last one, as if there had never been a barrier between them in the first place. They share a bed again. Much, much later, they become intimate again.

The first time goes horribly wrong.

All it takes is for Castiel’s expression to change just slightly as he gets more and more into it and Sam is scrambling out from underneath him, huddled in the opposite corner of the room with his hands over his head, torso heaving with hyperventilated breaths and shuddering cries.

They try again.

Castiel lets Sam take charge, set the pace of their relationship, be the dominant partner. He assures him that if Sam’s not ready to return to this yet, he will wait however as long as necessary. He has existed for a millennia, and even longer, always waiting. Even if he and Sam can never connect the way they did in the past, it wouldn’t matter. Just being near him is enough. Cas is patient, tender, with Sam. A day doesn’t go by that he doesn’t let Sam know how loved he is, assures him that this kind of reaction is normal for someone who has suffered so greatly.

There is nothing wrong with him.

But Sam has always been so brave, so strong, and can come back from anything. He perseveres, he endures. That is one of the things that Cas loves most about him.

Castiel knows what Lucifer did to Sam, down to every single detail. When he took on Sam’s Hell trauma, he’d seen the barrage of the hunter’s memories, felt it as if he were the one enduring it all. It never fails to amaze him how strong Sam Winchester truly is. Lucifer had violated Sam in the most horrific ways possible, in every manner feasible. And it didn’t end in the physical, but it certainly started there. Lucifer tore Sam apart, over and over, in body and soul.

Castiel isn’t an expert in trauma. Hell, he isn’t even knowledgeable enough of the human condition to even know the full extent of how those who were violated in such a way recovered from it. He’s read books. He’s watched people’s stories. But it’s still so hard to watch Sam go through this. Even before he truly understood what had happened to Sam in Hell, the signs were evident. He knew of Sam’s multiple sexual excursions while he was without a soul, something that Sam admitted was unlike him when he finally got it back. He listened when Dean told him that Sam hadn't been in an actual romantic relationship since Jessica, much less shown interest in anyone sexually since he got back from Hell. That was something Amelia had changed, during the year that Dean and Castiel were in purgatory. Then after that…nothing, until he and Sam connected.

It had always been there, a single ember waiting to be ignited into a bigger, uncontainable fire. He’d felt it the moment he and Sam had met -- all on Sam’s end, of course. He had been an absolute stranger to emotion, much less able to comprehend concepts as foreign as desire, affection, love. It took Sam lying on that stretcher, needle burrowed  in his neck as far as it would go, the hunter so close to the brink of death that Castiel couldn’t stand it before he became aware. It took the words “nothing is worth losing you” to slip angrily from his lips as Sam carelessly tried to offer up his own life, again, for him to understand. It took Sam’s arms around him in an embrace that they had both been aching for for so long for that fire to spark into something entirely new for both of them.

The summer Dean had died had been the hardest time either of them had to ever go through. Yet they’d had each other, wrapped in one another in a toxic case of dependency that both knew was unhealthy. But they were all each other had, and they kept each other going. And just as quickly as it had started between them, it stopped. They were both too angry, too desperate, for it to work right then -- the way that they knew it could be, should be. So they waited.

After Dean was restored, it became easier. They picked up where they left off, with many apologies and kisses. Things were good a while. Dean was properly squicked at the sight of them, they were holed up in Sam’s room for days at a time binge watching Netflix and partaking in other manner of recreational activity (whatever was playing on the television was naturally forgotten at this point).

It feels like it belongs to a hundred lifetimes ago.

Dean decides it’s time for him to intervene.

“Think about it, Sam,” He says to Sam one day with a mouthful of toast. “What made you fall for Cas, man? I mean really fall for him?”

Though he’s surprised by the question, (Dean doesn’t like to talk about these things) Sam ponders it, thinks it over for barely half a second. “Everything, really,” Sam says, shrugging.

“Like?”

But Sam’s not good at just talking about these things, either. “Just… you know, like the little things...  the things that make him Cas.”

Dean’s lips quirk in a smile and he tosses Sam a beer. “Then those are the things that bastard can’t mimic, right? Whenever you need to ground yourself to reality, Sammy, and you need to convince yourself that he’s not here… look for them. I see the way he looks at you. Lucifer couldn’t ever look at you that way, or feel things for you the way that Cas does.”

It’s the little things.

It’s the way Cas will still tilt his head in confusion when there is something he doesn’t quite get, the bafflement of humanity that a celestial being millions of years old will probably never truly understand, even having been human himself for a while. It’s the way Cas tries to use some sloppy pick up line he got from a book, or a television show, or Dean. It’s the way Cas guilts himself over and over, which Sam can pick up on with just a quiver of Cas’s lips. It’s the way the angel walks, talks, the light that reaches his eyes when Sam talks to him. It’s the way that Castiel says something that leaves Sam laughing so hard until he cries. It’s Castiel’s gentle touch as he pushes stray hair from Sam’s sweaty forehead when a flashback leaves him reeling. It’s the hesitant, but warm lips that meet his, never once burning cold.

It’s the little things that keep him grounded, little things that Castiel is not even aware of, the things that Sam loves about him that Lucifer has no part of. It was the little things that made Sam fall in love with Castiel. And it’s those same, seemingly insignificant little things that make him continue to do so.


End file.
